On the visibility of the inner-core shear wave phase PKJKP at long periods

Abstract

Stacks of over 90 000 long-period seismograms recorded by the global seismic networks resolve many seismic phases but fail to detect the inner-core shear phase PKJKP. We compare these results to synthetic seismograms computed for PREM using the spectral-element method and show that expected PKJKP amplitudes are over 10 times smaller than signal-generated 'noise' caused by high-order P surface multiples and reverberations from upper-mantle discontinuities. Indeed, PKJKP can only be seen in synthetic seismograms when differences are taken between two sets of synthetics generated from Earth models with slightly different inner-core shear velocities. These results suggest that routine observation of PKJKP is unlikely and that reported observations, if real, must have resulted from exceptional focusing effects or inner-core attenuation much less that current models. © 2011 The Authors Geophysical Journal International © 2011 RAS.